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My timeline is collapsing.

Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says (NYT, 3/15/18)

… And blew my fictional timeline to bits.

The first Joe Mayfield/Louise Napolitani novel, Fatal Score, turned on the idea that a good technological development (gene sequencing and analysis) is borrowed to shore up a socio-political problem (rising health care cost). And, of course, in a thriller, the good idea is twisted to evil purpose. It also seemed to me, back when I started writing in 2012, that the next front in international confrontation was going to be cyberwar.

It looks like I was right about the cyberwar part … but terribly wrong in timing. I set the first draft of Fatal Score in 2050. I have since pulled the date back to 2026, though the date is only mentioned once in passing. I figured trimming 24 years off the calendar would be adequate. To cut further, would put the first novel right in our laps. Well, here it sits, uncomfortably.

The third novel, tentatively titled Fail Deadly, needs to be set in about 2030 … except it’s about Russian oligarchs hacking into the power grid.

The NYT article notes,

“The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will.

United States officials and private security firms saw the attacks as a signal by Moscow that it could disrupt the West’s critical facilities in the event of a conflict.

They said the strikes accelerated in late 2015, at the same time the Russian interference in the American election was underway. The attackers had compromised some operators in North America and Europe by spring 2017, after President Trump was inaugurated.”